The retail shopping environment experience is often the deciding factor as to whether a retail consumer will purchase a product. For example, the consumer may casually browse the store when a product catches the consumer's attention. If the consumer is familiar with the product and brand through previous research such as consumer ratings, then the consumer is likely to make a definitive decision whether or not to purchase the product. For example, the consumer's past research may indicate that the product is highly reliable, thereby likely influencing the consumer to purchase the product. However, as often happens, the consumer is unfamiliar with the product and/or brand. In this case, the consumer will have to rely on the limited information displayed on the product itself, product box and/or displayed by the store. Often, such limited information does not include product information that is likely to influence the consumer to purchase the product, e.g., consumer ratings. As such, a lack of product information availability to the consumer, while casually shopping, may negatively impact the consumer buying experience and may dissuade the consumer from purchasing a product.
More and more, retail consumers use mobile phones to obtain information about an unfamiliar product while at the retail store. For example, consumers may search the internet on their mobile phones for more information about a particular product while still at the store. However, simply searching for product information on the internet via a search engine may be time consuming for the consumer, cost the consumer money for accessing the mobile device network and still may not provide the consumer with product information that is likely to influence the consumer's decision to purchase the product. Moreover, the search engine may recover irrelevant information, information from untrusted sources/websites, among other websites not associated with the retail store, thereby possibly providing the consumer inaccurate product information.
Some stores provide the consumer with a map of the store layout on a mobile phone display indicating the general location of the product within the store, thereby helping guide customers to the desired product. A mobile phone readable tag may even be provided at a location in the store to allow the mobile phone to pinpoint its location on a store map displayed on the mobile device. Also, some stores track inventory and location of the products within the store and use this information to show a consumer where to look on the store map for a desired product. However, using the mobile phone map of the store typically requires the consumer to be familiar with the product, i.e., the consumer is looking for a certain product by name. As such, consumers that are unfamiliar with items in the store may not get much use of the mobile phone map because the consumer does not known what item to locate.
Also, other stores provide a mobile phone application that notifies the consumer when the product falls below a threshold price. For example, the consumer may set a threshold price for a product of interest and the mobile phone application will notify the consumer when the product price falls below the threshold price. This type of mobile phone application requires the consumer to pre-configure a threshold price for each product. This process is time consuming, especially when the consumer is interested in many products. Moreover, this mobile phone application requires the consumer to be familiar with the product in order to be able to appropriately set the threshold price. As such, current mobile device applications are of limited use to causal shoppers that are not very familiar with the products within the store.
Even if the consumer manages to obtain product information via the internet and locates the item on a map displayed on the mobile device, the consumer still has to stand in the checkout line in order to finish the purchase. This is a time consuming process that often deters from the consumer's positive buying experience. Also, if the checkout lines are too crowded, the consumer may end up leaving the store without purchasing any products in order to avoid standing in the checkout line.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a system and method that efficiently provides consumer requested product information and also enables the consumer to purchase the corresponding product in an expeditious manner.